Michael Crummey

by Galore

  When they weren’t locked away with Patrick Devine’s books or Tryphie’s tools the boys tormented the goats in the meadow and tore up rhubarb gardens. They copied across the pans of sea ice that clogged the harbor each spring. They ran behind Sellers’ barns at milking time, beating the walls with sticks to set the skittish cows bucking. They threw rocks at the fishing room where the Great White was shut away, hoping to rouse some response to confirm the man was still among the living. They wandered the backcountry to play out complicated scenarios involving pirates and English soldiers or cowboys and Indians. Occasionally web-fingered Hannah Blade or one of the younger Woundys was drafted into the action, but more often than not they were alone.

  Increasingly their friendship felt like a straitjacket, an attachment cemented by obligation and guilt, and an edge of cruelty crept into it. Tryphie’s hunchback made him an easy target, the livid skin stretched across his shoulders like a carapace. Ladybug, Eli called him, Monkey-man, Ape. They set tests of endurance to watch the other fail, holding their palms over a candle flame until someone surrendered, pushing the other’s head underwater for the panic and choking, the snot and tears. Both boys felt diminished by their attachment but couldn’t see how to escape it.

  When they stripped out of their clothes to swim in the backcountry ponds the wind on their bodies stood their hairless pricks on end. They poked at one another innocently enough for a while, sword fighting they called it. And one afternoon Eli dared Tryphie to touch his cock, knowing Tryphie couldn’t resist a dare. —Too chicken to put it in your mouth, he said a week later. For the rest of that summer they lay side by side on the moss to suck one another after swimming, a pale starfish surrounded by miles of wilderness. They never spoke a word about it and Eli sidled up to the act each time, looking for any hint of hesitance or judgment in Tryphie’s manner. There was something shaming in the wariness it forced on them and eventually they avoided the backcountry ponds altogether to be free of it.

  On Sundays they went to church together, sitting in a pew with Bride and Tryphie’s two half-brothers. They never took in a word of Reverend Violet’s interminable sermons, Tryphie’s head full of gears, angles, torque, glue and bevels and sandpaper and ball bearings, Eli wandering the streets of Boston or Hartford or lying in the moss with a faceless man, the wind like a second skin on his skin. After the service he walked down the aisle with his coat buttoned and his hands folded in front of him while Tryphie rambled on about a watch that could predict the weather or a saw blade set into a table and powered by a foot-pump. There was no one else on the shore like himself, Eli thought, maybe no one in the whole of Newfoundland.

  The cod fishery followed its tidal rise and fall with implacable regularity, seasons of relative bounty followed by years of poor catches or poor markets overseas. The annual hunt for seals on the Labrador ice was lost to larger, faster steamships out of St. John’s and the bleak times made it hard to argue that anything less than Levi’s ruthlessness could keep Sellers & Co. afloat. Patrick Devine began traveling to St. John’s each spring in hopes of getting out from under the man’s thumb, spending the summer months aboard a schooner fishing cod off the Grand Banks.

  Eli lobbied to accompany his father on the bankers but Druce refused to surrender her youngest child, as if she knew Patrick was destined one year not to come home. Every spring mother and son descended into the same argument and found their crooked way back to the same conclusion. Patrick ignored the strife as best he could, though he sided with Druce when called upon directly. —There’s no besting her, he confided to the boy. —You want to save yourself some grief, he advised, don’t you marry a girl from the shore.

  When Tryphie turned sixteen he left to attend college in St. John’s in preparation for the inevitable medical degree. Eli was relieved to be free of his company but felt at a loss in his days without it. He knocked around on the waterfront and tramped over half the countryside, trying to fend off the hatred for the shore that grew in him like a black mold. It was a surprise to discover he despised the people closest to him simply for enduring their lives of want. The only venture on the shore not owned by or beholden to Levi Sellers was the Trims’ sawmill and Eli took a job there over the winter months, squirreling away nickels and dimes toward a way out.

  He was seen in the company of Hannah Blade on occasion and people thought they were just odd enough to make a grand couple. But Eli was never known to set his cap for any girl in particular. There was a solitude about him, a whiff of secrecy that encouraged idle speculation. Every discussion of Eli eventually ran through his family tree, as if it were a list of symptoms. Devine’s Widow begetting Callum who married hag-ridden Lizzie Sellers. Callum and Lizzie begetting Mary Tryphena and peg-leg Lazarus, raised from the dead and father to Jackie-tars on the Labrador. Mary Tryphena wedded to the stench of the Great White, and they two begetting Eli’s father, Patrick, who all but drowned himself to bring home a stack of books.

  Eli was a queer stick, no one could deny it. There’s no escaping your blood, people said, and Eli Devine was saddled with more weight than most.

  In the winter of his eighteenth year Tryphie brought his fiancée home to Paradise Deep for a Christmas wedding.

  Newman had planned to send his stepson to school in the States but Tryphie refused. Even St. John’s he had to be bullied into. He spent two homesick years at Bishop Feild College, miserable even while he fell in love with Minnie Rose, a kitchen maid at the house where he boarded. The two carried on a clandestine courtship for a year before Tryphie proposed.

  The couple arrived at Selina’s House mid-afternoon on Tibb’s Eve. Newman was in surgery and didn’t lay eyes on his future daughter-in-law until he sat at the supper table. A girl Tryphie had rescued from the life of a scullery maid, a seventeen-year-old with no education and less ambition, an attitude of congenital deference about her that set Newman’s teeth on edge. He excused himself without taking tea and hid out in his office until he did a last round for the evening and went to bed.

  —That girl wouldn’t last thirty seconds into an appendectomy, he said to Bride.

  —Tryphie isn’t marrying a nurse.

  —Well maybe he ought to be.

  —Don’t you say a word, she warned him.

  —And what if I do?

  Bride waited a moment, considering how far she was willing to push. —Tryphie’s never wanted to go to medical school at all, she said. —You know that.

  —And this is his way of getting out of it? Marrying a maid who can’t manage a sentence without the word sir or ma’am tacked to the end?

  Bride said, You’re just like your father, Harold Newman.

  —Goddamn it, woman.

  —If you profane the Lord once more, Bride said.

  Newman raised himself on an elbow, exasperated and furious and just the barest niggle of something sexual beginning to turn in him. —Are you going to wash my mouth out with soap, Nurse?

  She turned away on her side to hide her smile.

  —Kiss me, he said.

  —I wouldn’t touch those filthy lips to save my soul.

  She tried to fend him off when he fell on her, slapping at his ears. He grabbed her wrists to pin her arms above her head. —You’ve ruined my life, he said, nuzzling her breasts.

  —Sure you never had it so good, you foolish gommel, she said, falling back into an accent so thick he’d thought it a foreign language the first time he encountered her. There was something in hearing it that Newman rose to every time.

  Bride had always been able to tell what men wanted that way. Even as a girl of twelve and thirteen she could suss it out. It was a kind of weakness in them all and men distrusted her for knowing so much about their private selves. Newman, at least, seemed not to despise her for it.

  The chastity of her marriage to Henley Devine felt like a penance for her particular sins and there was nothing in lying with a man that Bride couldn’t live without if God required the sacrifice. She’d resigned herself to a life
of abstinence before Tryphie’s accident set her squarely in the way of the doctor. Her son permanently scarred and her husband carted home in a box and she couldn’t escape the thought it was God at work in her life. She prayed over the blasphemous notion for months and still it made no sense to her. The Lord was the only man Bride ever felt helpless to figure out and that helplessness was almost a relief. She set to work at the hospital as if it was her vocation and left the question of the doctor to Jesus.

  She lay catching her breath after they made love, her face pressed against her husband’s back. She never tired of it, the afterglow of giving and giving and being fed in return. And there was something in Tryphie that made her worry he’d never experience anything like it. He was different than her two younger sons, there was an insularity pushed on him by his long convalescence, an attachment to the mechanical world that seemed unnatural. She thought at times he might be incapable of recognizing love. —You won’t deny Tryphie a chance for this, she whispered. —So help me, Harold Newman.

  The wedding was set for Old Christmas Day and Newman didn’t speak against it the rest of the season. There was a dry dance at the Methodist church hall that went on late into the night, drinkers slipping outside to nip at flasks before coming back into the crush of noise and heat. Eli sat with Druce and Mary Tryphena all evening, in a sulk. He was happy to see Tryphie married off, as if it relieved him of some debt. But there was a weight on his chest as the vows were traded and the rings exchanged, and the weight would not leave him. Druce was watching her son out of the corner of her eye. —It’ll be your turn next, she said. —To get married, have a family.

  —Perhaps it will, he said.

  Druce nodded across the hall where John and Magdalen Blade sat at a table with Hannah. —I’ve always thought she was sweet on you, Druce said. —Why don’t you ask her up to dance?

  —I think I’ll wander home out of it, he said.

  It was after midnight at the tail end of the Christmas season and it was a surprise to everyone when the crowd of mummers came through the door of the hall, King Cole and Horse Chops and a retinue in rags behind them playing spoons and ugly sticks. They looked to have been on the move most of the night, drunk and rowdy to the edge of violence, shoving their way onto the dance floor, stealing women from their partners, yelling their fool heads off. Eli started for the door as soon as they came in but Druce grabbed his arm. —Don’t leave me alone with those savages, she said, smiling and happy to see them.

  King Cole made a proprietary round of the hall, shaking hands and begging drinks from teetotalers while people guessed at his identity. A Woundy, some thought, or one of the Toucher crowd. The King bowed low to the newlyweds before touching their shoulders with his staff as a blessing. Eli was in a chair behind his mother and the King almost passed by in the dim light. Raised both hands above his head when he laid eyes on him. —Horse Chops, he shouted in his high falsetto.

  Eli bolted for the door but a handful of mummers fell on him, dragging him back to a chair set in the center of the hall, the crowd urging them on.

  —This one, this one, the King said, shaking his staff at Eli. Horse Chops stood at the King’s side, draped in a brown blanket, the horse’s head rough-carved of wood, one brown eye and one blue painted on the face, the jaws on a hinge of leather. —Is this fellow in love, Horse Chops? the King asked.

  Clap.

  —In love, he is, King Cole shouted to applause and whistles. —Now tell us, Horse Chops, is his love a secret love?

  Clap.

  —Undeclared, friends. Is his beloved in the hall, Horse Chops?

  Clap.

  —Aha, aha, the King said, circling to survey the crowd, a buzz in the air. He held his staff out as a pointer and he let it come to rest on one girl after another, Hannah Blade and Az Trim’s youngest and Peter Flood’s great-granddaughter, Horse Chops galloping to stand over each in turn before he offered his judgment.

  Clap clap.

  Moans of disappointment following every denial, names of other hopefuls shouted from all sides. Eli tied to his chair by the room’s attention, wishing he was dead.

  The King knocked his staff on the floor in frustration. —Horse Chops, he said, are you sure the beloved is in the room?

  Clap.

  —Then go, the King shouted. He sat in Eli’s lap, an arm around his shoulders. —Show us, he said.

  Horse Chops trolled slowly from table to table, passing the newlyweds once, then a second time, chased by whistles of impatience. The mummer stopped suddenly as he passed Tryphie’s bride a third time, stepping behind her seat, the huge head swinging above her like a pendulum. She buried her face in her hands in embarrassment and the King jumped from Eli’s lap. —No, he shouted, it’s not our bride? Is the best man in love with the bride?

  Complete silence in the hall as Horse Chops deliberated.

  Clap clap.

  —Stop teasing us, Horse Chops, the King begged. —Out with it, man.

  Horse Chops wagged his head, as if catching a scent in the air. He shifted sideways to stand directly behind the groom, the hunchback, Tryphie Newman. Eli was out of his chair and aboard the King before another word was spoken, hammering at the man’s head with a fist, half the crowd rushing the floor to pile on. Az and Obediah Trim and the Reverend Violet waded into the mess, shouting for calm, and nothing much came of the altercation in the end. The mummers slinking out the door without ever revealing their identities and the dancing started up again as soon as they left. Eli disappeared after the mummers and no one laid eyes on him the rest of the night.

  The crowd escorted the newlyweds to the marriage bed when the dance ended, banging pots and pans and shouting behind the couple as they went. Eli heard the distant uproar from his perch on the Tolt, following the medieval wedding party along the harbor streets by the noise, the same as if they were carrying storm lamps in the dark. The well-wishers saw the couple through the door of Selina’s House and a few minutes later their racket fell silent.

  After the wedding party dispersed Eli walked back down into Paradise Deep, picking his way along the waterfront until he reached Judah’s asylum cell. He had only the vaguest memories of his grandfather and the man had all but disappeared from their lives in his mute isolation. Eli listened outside awhile but heard only the ancient sish of ocean on the landwash. The progress of time barely registered on the shore, he thought, circling on itself like that endless conversation of water and stone. They were bearing down on a new century and everyone Eli knew was still sleepwalking through the Middle Ages. All of them lost to the larger world no less than Judah was, shut away behind an unlocked door, scribbling nonsense on the walls. If he wasn’t half-frozen from standing out in the cold he would have wept at the thought.

  There was a light in the Blades’ window as he walked back through town and he let himself into the kitchen where John was sitting up with James and Matthew, a bottle open on the table. The two younger Blades were still dressed in the costumes they wore to the hall, Horse Chops’s head on the floor at Matthew’s feet.

  —Is Hannah about? Eli asked.

  John Blade stood to fetch him a glass. —She’s gone to her bed, he said. —She and her mother both. Sit down, he said.

  James was holding a piece of ice to the swollen side of his face and Eli nodded toward him. —You’re all right are you, Jimmy?

  —Hannah is some poisoned with us, he said.

  Matthew said, It was only a bit of fun we were having, Eli.

  John Blade brought Eli a drink and they all sat in silence awhile.

  —I never meant disrespect to Hannah, Eli said. He was speaking directly to John, watching the girl’s father in the light of the candle. —I never said anything meant to raise her hopes. She’s a fine girl, Mr. Blade.

  John Blade nodded and refilled glasses all around and they carried on drinking. Hannah came into the tiny kitchen an hour later, woken by the racket. Her presence in the doorway shushed them and Eli watched in silence as she too
k her drunken father by the elbow to help him to his bedroom. As soon as she was out of sight, James and Matthew crept to the door. They lived in houses to either side of John and Magdalen and were suddenly anxious to get home. Matthew pushed James out into the cold and turned back to the kitchen. —Hold her off for us, Eli, he said. —For the love of Christ.

  When Hannah came back to the kitchen she was carrying a quilt. —You can lie out there, she said, pointing to the daybed near the stove.

  —I was just on my way home, he said.

  —That’s a long walk this time of night.

  He fixed her with a drunken look. Thick red hair, delicately freckled hands clutching the quilt. He’d held one of those hands an afternoon when he was ten, rescuing her from a pirate lair on the barrens, a simple childish affection between them. It was the first time she’d let anyone not her family touch the webbed skin between her fingers.

  —What is it you wants, Eli? she asked him.

  —Out, he said. —Elsewhere.

  —And what do you expect to find elsewhere?

  He gestured around the room, too drunk to censor himself. —Not this, he said.

  —Well then, she said and she settled the quilt closer to her belly. —You watch yourself going home, she told him.

  Barnaby Shambler died during an afternoon debate at the Colonial Building in St. John’s. He’d gained a reputation as a napper in his latter years, snoring quietly through the business of government, and to all appearances the Legislature’s most senior member had simply fallen asleep. But he couldn’t be roused when it came time to vote on the tabled bill and was pronounced dead by one of the handful of doctors who served as elected members in the House. His body was shipped to Paradise Deep for what turned out to be the last funeral officiated by the Reverend Eldred Dodge.